Working hard in high school paid off for me. I got into UCSB, a very good University in one of the most gorgeous locations right on the beach. I met my TDH there halfway through my freshman year. It was love at first sight. I was completely crazy about him. I will never forget the night we met. I had recently broken up with my long time high school sweetheart, I had some recent awful one night stands, and I had just sworn off boys. I went out with my sorority sisters to a party but did not drink that night (The only time I was sober at a college party mind you, and a key reason why my TDH even bothered to speak to me for longer than five minutes since he does not think drunk teenage girls are very attractive!) and there he was. He was gorgeous! I could not stop staring at him and I noticed he kept glancing back at me. I was too shy to say anything or go up to him so I just pretended like I did not notice. Eventually, one of my sorority sisters came up to me and said her boyfriend had a friend visiting who thought I was cute and pointed to TDH. I was in heaven. She introduced me to him and we ended up spending the entire night together. We were up until 7am talking. It was the night of my life.

We were absolutely crazy about each other. Every second I was away from him all I thought about was him and the next time I would see him. When we were together we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. I remember the week after we first met his parents were out of town (he had recently moved back in with his parents after breaking up with his long time girlfriend) he invited me over to watch a movie. We started watching “What Lies Beneath” and five minutes into the movie we were too busy making out we completely forgot about the movie. We didn’t stop until it was almost over and had to restart the movie and watch it from the beginning!

My TDH and I had a crazy, kind of rocky relationship. We broke up, and got back together so many times I have lost count. We had so much passion and love for each other that we could not stay away from each other very long, but we were both in very different stages in life, he was graduated from college with a full time job and I was just beginning my college career and my new independent life. I was still very young and very flirty.

My TDH was also getting over a very serious relationship. He had dated and lived with a girl in college at Indiana University. She had moved to Southern California for him and they had recently broken up. He was infatuated with me but a couple weeks after we started dating he broke up with me. I was sad but it wasn’t the end of the world. I mean, I had only known the guy a couple of weeks. A week later he called me to let me know he was coming to Santa Barbara to watch a Tyson fight with a friend and wanted to see me. We made up and got back together that night.

The summer after my freshman year I moved into a duplex with some of my sorority sisters on Del Playa, the craziest street in Santa Barbara. Above us lived a bunch of boys. We would often get very drunk together and I would get a little too friendly when I was drunk. I remember getting in a lot of fights with TDH over this.

My sophomore year of college, my TDH talked me into moving into an apartment with him near campus. He had gotten a job in Santa Barbara and was moving close to campus. This was a huge deal for me, the first time living with a boy! I was so excited, but so scared at the same time. It was not the same for my TDH, he had lived with a girl for two years in college. Five months after moving in together, my TDH unexpectedly broke up with me and told me he was moving away. This time, I was broken hearted and completely devastated. I felt like I was in a nightmare, how could this happen to me? How could he hurt me like this? But I was strong, I have dealt with pain before and I got over it. I could get over this. I moved out and we broke up for about a month. But of course, we could not stay away from each other for long. We eventually got back together and I eventually forgave him, although not completely. I was scarred and very scared.

When I had first met my TDH, he talked about moving to Los Angeles to try to be an actor or a model. I really wanted to support him and during the time we lived together I applied to UCLA and got in. I decided, even though I knew my TDH would not come with me, to transfer to UCLA because it was a better school. So I moved to LA my Junior year into the transfer housing. I made friends fast and totally immersed myself in school. I toned down my partying, got a research job in a lab, and spent my days going to class and doing research and my nights studying. My first year in LA Eddie and I had a pretty rough time. I did not have a car and he lived an hour away. We saw each other almost every weekend but I lived in a house with 25 other students so we never got any private time.

It was in my first year at UCLA where I met the French guy. Transfer housing was also home for some of the foreign exchange student. One of them, the French guy, was fairly good looking and he had a pretty sexy accent. All the girls in the house were head over heals for him. But he had a French girlfriend so we all thought he was off limits. Well, one night, during a period when my TDH and I had been fighting a lot, I had gone out with some of my housemates to a bar. We were dancing and all of a sudden the French guy grabbed me and started kissing me. I was shocked and so were my girlfriends because they immediately pulled me to the bathroom and started asking me what I was doing. After that night I broke up with my TDH and started spending a lot of time with the French guy. It lasted two weeks and then he went back to France and I have never talked to him again. Why I risked a loving lasting relationship with the person who cared for me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me for a two week fling, I have no idea. I have no idea what I was thinking or if I was thinking at all!

I didn’t tell my TDH about the French guy at first, but he was devastated about us breaking up. He wanted to get back together and finally I broke down and told him thinking he would never want to be with me again. He was completely devastated. I have never hurt anyone so completely and utterly in my life. The worst part was that I loved and cared for my TDH so much and I realized (way too late) that I was completely stupid and selfish to do what I did. What was I thinking? How could I do that? I was disgusted with myself. I did a great job at making myself feel miserable about it the rest of that school year. But nothing can describe how my TDH made me feel. He went through every emotion known to man, he was furious, devastated, exasperated, depressed, miserable, sad, you name it he felt it. And he made me feel utterly worthless. He made me feel like a slut, a whore, a selfish bitch, a worthless person. I do not exactly remember how it happened, but eventually we got back together and got over it but it was one of the most devastating events of my life and I will always be scarred from it. I did not know how to deal with all the pain I felt during this time of my life and I’m not sure how it happened exactly but I think it was just the last straw and an accumulation of everything I had to deal with in my life but it was right around this time when I turned to Bulimia for comfort for the first time.